Read Online The Woman Who Had Imagination by H.E. Bates - Free Book Online

change also. The yellowing wheat-fields, the dark fields of roots shining and drooping in the hot sun, the parched hayfields and woods were replaced by an immense park of old dark trees under which the grass was still spring green and sweet. Far off, timid and startled, groups of young deer,palest brown against the dark tree-shadows, with an occasional dark antlered, resentful stag, stood and watched the brake go past with glassy, wondering eyes. Soon, through wider spaces between the trees, there was the big house itself, a square, stone tall-windowed place, with a carved stone balustrade round the lead roof and immense black cedars encircling the lawns. It looked cold and sepulchral even against the rich darkness of the trees in the hot sunlight.
    The brake turned into the park through high iron gates on which the family crest blazed in scarlet and gold. It was as if it had driven into a churchyard. The passengers were suddenly transformed, sitting with a stiff, self-conscious silence upon them. As the brake drove along under a great avenue of elms extending like a sombre nave up to the lawns of the house, the horses fell into a walk. The fishmonger sat very upright on the driver’s seat, preening his buttonhole, and the fat woman, sucking her last cachou quickly, wiped her lips clean with her handkerchief. The handsome young man in a rakish straw hat, taking his hand away from the school teacher’s knee, ceased his seductive whispers. The carriage-drive emerged in an immense sweep from under the dark avenue into the sunlight and curved on between the lawns and the house. The brake pulled up behind a row of other brakes standing empty by a tall yew-hedge and the choir began to alight, the men handing down the ladies from the awkward back-step and the ladies giving littledelicate shrieks and pretending to stumble. Henry’s father dragged out from under the brake seat an immense portmanteau of music. From over the lawns gay with parasols and flowing frocks, there came a scent of new-mown grass and women’s dresses, the swooning breath of lime trees and a hum of human voices like the sound of bees.
    Across the lawn also came a man in an old panama hat, a yellowish alpaca suit and a faded green bow, beaming with smiles and gestures of aristocratic idiocy.
    â€˜Oh, pardon, pardon me!’ he cried. ‘But ’oo are you? Oh! Orpheus choir! Yes! Orpheus! Marvellous! T’ank you a t’ousand times for coming. Yes! And if you desire anyt’ing please come to me. Anyt’ing you like. Anyt’ing. And T’ank you a t’ousand times for coming! T’ank you a t’ousand times! And eez it not ze most marvellous day? Most marvellous!’
II
    In the full heat of the afternoon, tired from walking about the crowded lawns in the fierce sunshine and even more bored that he had been in the brake, Henry saw people passing in and out of the house through a side door on the terrace. Following them, he found himself in a wide lofty entrance hall that had about it the queer half-scented coolness of a church and the same hollow silence broken at intervals by the sound ofvoices and strange receding and returning echoes. He took off his straw hat and wiped his sweaty forehead with his handkerchief. The air felt as cool as a leaf on his hot face. In answer to his question a negative-faced manservant standing at ease like a tired soldier at the foot of a wide stone staircase told him that the house was open to visitors till five o’clock. He walked quietly up the stairs, his feet soundless on the heavy carpet, staring at the magnificence of gilded ceilings, dim tapestries, old dark portraits, immense sparkling chandeliers, touching the flower-smoothness of old chests and chairs with his finger-tips as he passed. Upstairs he went in and out of innumerable rooms, staring at vast canopied bedsteads, lacquered cabinets filled with never-opened books and fragile china, dim painted screens and ornate